10 Things You Will Always Need to Know About This City (Lethbridge)

10 Things You Will Always Need to Know About This City (hereafter 10 Things) invited members of the community to contribute to a series of time capsules that will be embedded throughout the city of Lethbridge for periods of time ranging from next year to 1000 years from now. The time capsules asked for intimate and essential understandings about the city through the inclusion of urgent and important items from today alongside more reflective or speculative items that can describe people or places that have already been lost, or inventions, architectures or dreams that should exist.

The project aimed to create an opportunity to consider time through the lenses of legacy and burden as practices of everyday life, forms of resistance, and forward-looking records for the city of Lethbridge. Contributions of small artefacts, stories, and documents formed the basis of the official entries to the series of 10 time capsules.

Each time capsule will be themed around a prompt or question about Lethbridge, and each entry will, in turn, aim to provide a response. Accompanying these object-based responses will be a small publication featuring written responses from interviews with the project participants, copies of which will be made available online and in print to help document the project. The time capsules themselves will be laser-engraved stainless steel containers of various sizes and will be buried, embedded, and otherwise stored in various locations throughout the city. Upon completion, a plaque will be created with the GPS coordinates and opening dates of the time capsules, hosted in perpetuity at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery.

Commissioned by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in 2014.

10 People to be Invited

1. Someone younger than 10 2. Someone who knows a lot about the history of Lethbridge 3. Someone who can tell stories 4. Someone who knows a little about the future of Lethbridge 5. Someone who you would turn to in a time of need 6. Someone you don’t always agree with, but respect a lot 7. Someone who knows about the lesser-known things in Lethbridge 8. Someone whose family has been here a long time 9. Someone who just got here 10. Someone who really cares about this city

10 Questions to be Answered

1. Where can you find the heart of this city? 2. What is a legacy you encounter today that would have been really important yesterday? 3. What will stand the test of time? 4. What will be erased and forgotten? 5. Why does this city matter? 6. How do you know you’re here? 7. What’s left when the city is dark and quiet? 8. What is urgent and pressing in this city? 9. How could you make this city better? 10. What is one thing that you will always need to know about this city?